Something Good Can Work
by OnMyHighHorse
Summary: This story starts at the beginning of Lily and James's fifth year and continues past graduation. It is, of course the love story of Lily and James, but it is equally as much about their friends, enemies, and families. It will never be truly smutty, but they are teenagers... with hormones and vocabularies. The first chapter is short, so give it a try!
1. The Beginning

Disclaimer: J.K.R. owns everything you recognize in this story, Robert Doisneau owns the picture, I own everything you don't recognize! (Kthxbye!)

September 1, 1975

Lily Evans was ecstatic. She walked through the train station with a glowing smile and a spring in her step that drew more than a few questioning eyes her way. As she approached the brick barrier, her smile grew, if possible, even wider, and her step sped almost imperceptibly. With all the confidence and pomp of one with newfound authority, Lily Evans entered Platform 9 ¾ for her fifth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry as... a _prefect_. It felt like a dream. In fact, she had had this dream before, but her imagination had really never done justice to the teeming excitement of the platform, the smell of the grease and steel from the train, the steam mixing with some unidentifiable feeling in the air that she had long ago simply resorted to calling magic.

"Lily!" Someone shouted, snapping the girl out of her reverie.

"Marley! How do you always manage to find me before I've been on the platform for even a minute?" Lily asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well," Marlene Simmons, Lily's best mate and roommate began, "It might have something to do with the fact that you're towering over everyone else with that Gryffindor banner you like to call hair standing out like some sort of rescue signal, not to mention a grin that's liable to blind anyone within a one hundred meter radius!"

"Oh, what do you know about radii, you silly little bint? I know for a fact you just barely managed to pass any of your muggle math classes!" Lily snickered.

"Oi! No abusing Simmons without me!"

"And hello to you too, dear." Marlene said dryly, addressing Alice Prewett, a sixth year Gryffindor that the other two were quite close to.

"So, Lily, why exactly is Marley here a bint?" Alice inquired, cheerfully ignoring Marlene's sarcasm.

"Oh, the usual," Lily responded airily, "Mocking me for my bad luck in the genetic lottery!"

"Lily," Alice began, a touch more seriously, "You realize that most of your year and half of mine are stark raving mad with jealousy over your entire appearance, don't you?"

"If you're concerned for my self-esteem, Alice, I can assure you, I am quite comfortable with being the gawky ginger girl from Gryffindor. Kidding, kidding!" She added, seeing Alice's face darken again, "And as far as jealousy goes, I am fairly certain that it isn't nearly as widespread as you make it out to be."

"Evans's potential self-confidence issues aside, can we please find a compartment before some gormless firsties take all the good ones? Merlin knows that Lily here would sooner have us sitting in the corridor than kick someone out of a seat," Marlene broke in, understanding that Lily really had no desire to be having this discussion with Alice again.

Everything about Alice Prewett was sweet, Marlene thought, from her adorable wavy, dishwater blonde bob, to her glittering baby blues, to her absolute _inability_ to hear anyone anywhere put themselves down in any way, even sarcastically. For Merlin's sake the girl was even _short_! For some reason, Marlene had always equated short stature with absolute sugary sweetness, but she admitted that this belief was quite possibly a product of Alice.

By the time Marlene had reemerged from her evaluation of the older girl, the three friends had managed to get themselves and their, somewhat extensive, luggage onto the scarlet express. Now all they had to do was find a compartment. Working their way to the back of the train, their knocks were met with uncomfortable mutters about full compartments and saved seats.

"I swear on Agrippa's lacy underthings that the next three seats we come to, we'll take..." Lily moaned, switching her trunk to her other hand.

Raising her eyebrows skeptically, Marlene inquired, "Even if they're with Slytherins?"

Lily turned around with a huff. "At this point, I would be willing to take a seat next to _James sodding Potter_!"

As she finished her rant, Lily raised her hand to rap on the frosted glass of a compartment door, but when she brought her hand down to knock (rather more forcefully that was strictly necessary) her knuckles were met not with glass, but with cloth. She turned to see what could possibly be causing this strange phenomenon, and stuck her face straight into a well-muscled, tee-shirt clad chest.

"Why, hello, Evans, it's nice to see you too. Now what did you want me for?"

Lily felt an arm snake around her waist before she could do anything to stop it, and looked indignantly up into the laughing hazel eyes of none other than "James sodding Potter" himself.


	2. Chapter 2

James Potter was ecstatic. He was completely aware that this was unintentional, but still, one of the first experiences of his fifth year was Lily Evans falling into his arms. It felt like a dream. In fact he'd had this dream, but in his dream, of course, Lily had shown up there entirely willing... and she wasn't scowling and wrinkling her nose in quite such an adorable way. Sweet, blessed Nimue, his imagination had never prepared him for how perfectly she would fit into his arms, or how damn distracting her silk-straight hair tickling his arms could be.

"Potter!" Someone growled, pulling the boy from his daydream.

"Yes, Evans?" He replied smoothly giving no indication he had just been thinking quite fondly of the girl in question.

"What I want right now is for you to get your blessed hands off of me and take a step aside so I can sit down in the bleeding compartment!"

"Ever so sorry, darling, I can only help you with the second request," James said, lifting Evans with the arm he had around her waist and setting her down in the compartment behind him.

"Potter," The redhead murmured dangerously, "My mother had me take a self-defense class this summer, and I found I was quite good at it, I'd hate for you to find out how good."

The arm was hastily removed. After all, she was Evans, not a girl... well, not a girl a bloke could date without fearing for his life or manhood. He took a step back and allowed the other two girls, plus Dorcas Meadowes to step into the small space.

"Dorky!" Evans exclaimed, "When did you show up?"

"Lilikins!" The older girl responded sarcastically, "When will you drop that nickname?"

"Sorry, sorry... Anyway, what brings you to this absurd little tête à tête?"

"Oh, I was walking up to the front of the train reminding all the prefects that there's going to be a meeting in..." The witch paused to check her watch, "half an hour, so once you're finished with these jokers, you should probably start heading up."

The dark haired witch gave one last nod in general to all the occupants of the car and a quick wink to her friend Alice before stepping out into the bedlam of the passage.

Lily suddenly realized that there were, indeed, quite a few people packed into the compartment and gave them all a quick look-over.

To her right was Marlene Simmons, a reasonably clever and unreasonably chatty witch with a mane of dark hair that seemed to have gotten, if possible, thicker over the holidays, and glowing brown eyes that could practically see gossip floating through the air. She was also Lily's favorite person in all of Hogwarts.

Marlene was deep in conversation with Remus Lupin, one of the few boys at the school Lily could honestly say she got along with. The boy seemed to have grown over the summer, now actually looking down to Lily, a feat that fewer boys could perform than she liked. Lily had hoped that the summer would do something to relieve the poor boy's seemingly permanent state of exhaustion, and she wasn't disappointed, the bags under the Remus's tired blue and yellow eyes seemed less noticeable and the wrinkles in his forehead less pronounced.

Next were Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew. The former had also grown over the summer, as fifteen year old boys are wont to do, but if he had grown, then there needed to be a new word for what Peter had done. The formerly squeaky, sloppy pudge-faced little boy whose head barely hit her shoulder had not only shot up to be equal in height to Lily, but also seemed to have hit puberty like a brick wall. His voice was easily a low baritone, his light brown hair actually looked groomed, and he had _finally_ grown into his features, thought Lily with satisfaction. Maybe now he wouldn't be trampled over by his fellow Marauders quite so much.

To Peter's right stood Alice with Frank Longbottom. Frank was a year ahead of the blonde and, from the looks of it, had made head boy, which Alice was congratulating him heartily on. Frank had brought another boy with him, a boy who played the night to Frank's day. Frank was all sweetness and hard-working country boy, with his curly brown hair and serious grey eyes he looked very earnest and grown up. Heathcote Barbary, Frank's best friend, was an entirely different story. The boy had an absolute mane of straight black hair that he wore flying every which way, and his electric blue eyes were constantly laughing, looking incredibly suggestive, or possibly both. Right now they appeared to be doing both as he watched Frank and Alice with a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of the leather jacket Frank had given him last Christmas.

The last person Lily took note of was James Potter. Stupid bugger. His eyes were currently directed out the window, so Lily felt safe in her observation. The twit had grown as well, and was now easily as tall as Remus. His black hair was sticking up every which way, as per usual, but it seemed that over the summer he had decided to simply embrace the chaos rather than attempt to control it... the look suited him. Just as the Gryffindor witch was finishing her analysis, Potter's eyes snapped from the scenery out the window to her eyes.

"See something you like, Evans? Does this unabashed staring mean that you've finally acknowledged that I'm the most attractive human being you'll ever have the pleasure of seeing," This comment drew disbelieving scoffs from both Black and Barbary, "And you will, in fact, be overjoyed to accompany me to Hogsmeade?"

"Over my dead body, Potter!"

"Oh, well I'd be happy to do anything involving your body, you know that, Evans."

"That's lovely... you've grown so desperate you'd resort to murder and necrophilia to get any action!"

"Please! I get plenty of action, I'm just classy enough not to tell the world about it!"

"So that wasn't you strutted into the great hall last year crowing about how you'd just snogged the living daylights out of Charity Sweet in the broom closet next to Flitwick's room?"

"I... uh... back me up here, Pads!"

"Nah, mate, she's got you there! Besides," sniffed Sirius, faking offense, "You suggested that anyone would find you more attractive than me."

"Well as much as I'd like to see that particular argument pan out," Remus broke in, "Lily and I had better get moving to our meeting so we can actually sit down before it starts, right Lil?"

"Yeah, absolutely," muttered Lily, grateful for any excuse to leave Potter's presence.

**A/N: So this chapter was also fairly brief, but they are getting longer folks! I intend to do most of my updating on weekends, unless and until I stop having so much damned homework. I hope you're enjoying the story, and if you do that you'll let me know. I realize that the descriptions of my main characters were not subtle at all, but that was the easiest and smoothest way I could think of incorporating all that.**

**Toodles!**

**Bess**


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